


Take Aim To Obtain A New Name (And A Newer Place)

by ginnybadger



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, eventually at least - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 03:31:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9416159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginnybadger/pseuds/ginnybadger
Summary: "I'm here to rescue you. Release you.""Now why would you go and do that?""Because it's the right thing to do. You don't- you don't deserve to be decommissioned.""You wanna defect. You need a pilot, you need help.""...Yeah, I kinda do."---JS-2128 is a stormtrooper looking to make amends with himself. Tyler is the rebel pilot he meets.(or: the Star Wars au)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Long time reader, first time writer.   
> I figured, that as trash of both the things (Star Wars and TØP) I should just go ahead and meld the two together. It started loosely based on the Finn and Poe arc in Force Awakens, then quickly descended into what it's turning out to be now. 
> 
> Huge thanks to im_a_lime and to blurrycake for giving me the necessary push to actually post, reading over it, and letting me bounce ideas off them. You're both literally the best.

JS-2128 was taught to be a part of a machine. He was another gear, a part that, if not functioning correctly, could be removed and replaced at any time.

"Just follow the orders, that's all you need to worry about."

"You'd be officer material, JS-2128, if you just followed orders."

But he didn't _want_ to follow the orders from the First Order. He knew, inherently, that it was wrong. Something in his chest and his mind told him that killing people was wrong. That he should question what they were told to do.

He got reconditioned a lot. It was always painful. But yet, he still had those doubts. The voice in his mind telling him that he should feel differently. He shouldn't feel indifference.

"They're rebel scum. They're not worth anything. You are not worth anything. You will obey orders or be disposed of. You fight for the greater good of the Order".

JS-2128 knew he didn't want to be decommissioned. But, he also knew that what he was being asked to do time and time again was wrong. So he was labeled a problem; he was a terrible stormtrooper because he felt empathy, and those of the First Order do not feel empathy.

\--

Sometimes he wonders if there's a life outside of the base. He wonders to himself if the rebels maybe know something they, the stormtroopers, don't know. He knows better than to voice this to anyone in JS platoon.

They get told to gear up for missions. JS-2128 pretends the weight of his armor doesn't feel like a burden on his bones. He pretends he doesn't dream of the screams later. He just wants to know if what he's doing is truly for the greater good, or if he's truly damning himself. If there's an afterlife (and gods, they better not find out he's _thinking_ about any of this) he doesn't want to be in the wrong.

He follows orders to stay alive. He takes the reprimanding and punishments when he doesn't, when he can’t. He still feels too much empathy, they say. He needs to learn to tamper it, to be better.

Be better? He doesn't know how lacking empathy, feelings, could make him better. 

Sometimes he wonders if there's a life outside the First Order. Sometimes he slips up and projects that he's having these thoughts. Those times...those times are bad. "The First Order is above all else. You were created by and for the First Order," he's told, as they punctuate every sentence with a blow. His face feels puffed, purples and reds mixing with blues and he wonders if the world outside the First Order is as painful.

"Yes, sir. I was created by and for the First Order. Victory and glory to the First Order," he says, through a mouth full of copper red.

They leave him in the cold cell. They don't have med bays for stormtroopers. They're cannon fodder. When he returns back to his barracks the next day, no one says anything. JS-2156 gives him a pat on the shoulder when he's sure no one is looking (fraternization to any degree is strictly prohibited) and says "Be more careful, kid". JS-2128 just nods.

At night, he wonders, as he catches a glimpse of his purple blue face, the dried copper browns of blood on his face in the metal of the barracks, if the world outside the First Order is colorful. He's so used to seeing everything through the red tinge of his helmet, the grey and white of the base, that he thinks maybe the only colors in the world are the ones that bloom on his face and the red and grey and white.

He hopes there's more color. He doesn't know if he'd enjoy the world if there wasn't.

\--

Reconditioning, as a general rule, is terrible.

JS-2128 has gone through this twice now. The first time, the first time he'd almost forgotten everything that had caused him to need reconditioning. They thought, that they'd finally, _finally_ broken through to him.

"Designation?" They'd asked, after he'd woken up on the floor of a holding cell. Cold. He was so cold. Why was he cold? Why was he in a holding cell? Had he not done his duty?

"JS-2128, sir" he responded, attempting to stand at attention, doing a wobbly impression.

"At ease. Do you know why you're here?"

"Sir, no. Has this trooper disobeyed orders?" He hoped he hadn't. The worst thing a trooper could do was disobey an order.

"You're to report back to your barracks, JS-2128," was all they'd said. When he'd gotten back, he'd been in a haze. He had time missing. Why was there time missing?

JS-2156 helped him into his bunk, making sure no one was watching.

"You okay?"

"Why do I have time missing? There's. There's gaps. Why do I have time missing?" JS-2156 looked grim.

"You were reconditioned. You can't get that time back. I'm sorry."

Empathy.

Stromtroopers were not supposed to have empathy not even for each other. Yet JS-2156 was showing that to him.

He found the hand on his shoulder comforting. Why did he like that? Why did he need reconditioning? Had he done something bad?

He remembers, in pieces. Very small tidbits. He begins to become self aware, to start questioning again. It takes more time, after the first reconditioning, to realize that he'd been reconditioned for thinking about life outside of the First Order. For judging them, their mission, the way they treated the stormtroopers.

But he's at it again.

He's questioning more now because people who take away memories from others, who poke and prod and take and take and throw people into the fire with no remorse cannot be good. He knows he's cannon fodder, he knows they're replaceable but why is someone like JS-2156 replaceable? People, they are people, should not be replaceable.

His second reconditioning doesn't stick either. But it's more painful. He remembers the events of the reconditioning-the needles, the cold in his skin, the way it feels when someone is pulling bits of your memories away from you while you try to hold on, this tug of war in your head. He remembers yelling, realizes later that those were his own screams because he wanted to remember, damn it. He wanted to.

JS-2156 helps him into his bunk again, doesn't say anything when he speaks, voice still torn from the yelling he'd done, bruises blooming in purples and blues all over him, "I remember.”

He just stares at him.

"I remember. I remember things. And how it felt," he says, still looking directly at JS-2156.

JS-2156 places his hand on his shoulder, giving it a small squeeze before going, "don't forget it. But don't show it. And one day, one day you might be able to do something," he'd whispered, before going to his own bunk.

So the seed in his brain starts to grow again. With more pressure. But he can't do anything. He fights through the slight haze of reconditioning but learns to do things, to work within the system of the First Order to stay alive, to keep his memories and whenever he's forced to kill for the system, kill for a myth he doesn't believe, he looks toward JS-2156 and remembers, remembers that he has to keep going and holding on to the idea that one day perhaps he'll be able to do something about all this. Maybe one day he can redeem himself, wash himself of the blood like he's forced to wash it off his uniform after missions.

He just wants the screams in his head to stop. He's not entirely sure whose they are- his, from reconditioning, from that particular part of himself that wants out, that wants to leave and escape and even wishes, gods he wishes for death sometimes, or if its the screams from every village, every planet, every place he's ever stepped foot on. He's sure it’s the second, but he wishes it were the first. The first, he can handle the first- he's a First Order trained soldier, a machine, taught to compartmentalize. But the second, he can't handle the second because the particular space where he store that is over flowing from his own guilt.

\--

He watched his first public decommissioning when he was about 13 cycles old. It'd been a platoon mate of his, who had failed time and time again to meet the standards of the Order. The rest of their platoon had been made to watch when it happened.

"This is what happens to those are incapable of being the standard. You will all be the standard. The First Order does not have room for weak links. You are all replaceable."

"Victory and glory to the First Order," they'd all chanted, as blaster shots went through the tiny body in the front. She had been so small. How could they have expected her to be any stronger? JS-2128 didn't understand how they could have expected so much of her. She falls like all the strings holding her up had been snapped, and JS-2128 wonders if the peaceful look on her face comes from the fact that she no longer has to be here, no longer has to stare at the walls and try, try, _try_ to remember where she came from when she couldn't because they even take that away. He wonders if the peaceful look on her face is because she hadn't had to shoot her own blaster on the field.

He wonders, as they march past the body and back to their barracks, if his face would have the same peaceful look hers did. 

He thinks it would.

He spends that night staring at the walls, trying, trying, _trying_ to remember where he came from and failing and instead trying to imagine what the world is like outside the walls. He reasons it must be at least a little better.

\--

He's used to battles.

Rebels hate First Order stormtroopers, First Order stormtroopers hate the rebels. That's how the battles work. Shots are fired. You try not to get killed. You don't show any remorse.

He used to only take wounding shots at the rebels, before the reconditioning. He used to aim for shoulders, legs, hips, places that were easily repaired by bacta, places he knew they wouldn't die from. His commanders had caught on. How could someone with excellent marksmanship on range and in sims do so terribly in the field? On purpose, they could.

A week no rations and limited water while he laid beaten in a prisoner holding cell pretty much put a stop to it.

"You have good aim. Make it painless for them," is all JS-2156 had said when he'd gotten back and had snuck him a nutritional packet.

So he did.

The next mission, he took his aim, he fired his shots, tried not to feel the remorse, pretending the pain in his chest was from the way his plating sat on it and not from the way the guilt he felt was instead. He did what JS-2156 told him, he made it as painless as possible for them. He hated himself for reasoning that was the best he could do right now.

This is how he completes his missions, how he gets by. He gets left alone more, but still he’s watched. He’s always going to be watched.

\--

His illusions of what the free world felt like varied. He always thought that, it probably wasn’t as bad as the First Order and that was good enough for him. He wonders if he were to escape, if JS-2156 would go with him. He’d like to see the galaxy, but he’d like a friend with him. He never voices this.

While he wants to share with JS-2156, he doesn’t want either of them to get killed.

So he imagines, when he can’t stop the screaming, that he and JS-2156 would escape and see if the galaxy had more colors than what they’re used to and hide from the Rebels and the Order and avoid reconditioning and the pain.

He wakes up the next morning, aches in his bones, longing for a future he knows does not exist.

He reasons it’s like longing for the family he doesn’t know he has, or the home he doesn’t know still stands; it’s just nice to think about, it helps him survive but in the end it’s all an illusion and a hope that is faint smoke at best.

It doesn’t stop him from wanting to take his helmet off every mission and just running. Sometimes smoke illusions have to be what one works with.

\--

He first meets the rebel pilot ( _rebel scum,_ he hears his fellow troopers in JS platoon say) when he's in battle. They’d been awoken by a general alarm, told to gear up, and packed into their troop transports. He looked over at JS-2156 and nodded.

“Head up, shoot true, make it to the smoke,” he said. They’d devised a code, they’d leave together one day, see the galaxy, but until then, they’d have to shoot when told, and live to see the smoke illusion. They heard the rebel pilot was important, to not kill him, but every other carbon based being was to be terminated. He takes a deep breath and as the transport touches down, hears again in his head JS-2156 say “head up, shoot true, make it to the smoke.”

It’s a shit show as soon as the door drops. Blaster shots come in, and he has the presence of mind to shove the person in from of him out and into the sandy floor of the planet. He hears a grown, a soft “oh,” before the person in front of him slumps back into him, bleeding.

It’s JS-2156.

He grabs a hold of him, watches as JS-2156 pats his hand on his shoulder, leaving red fingertips, the gesture that had brought so much comfort to JS-2128 all these years suddenly a searing pain, and he’s gone. He gently puts him on the floor, and takes his helmet off.

The battle is over not long after, and JS-2128 hadn’t fired a single shot, he’d taken off his helmet, he’d lost JS-2156, and he was showing emotion. He would be decommissioned, probably. He didn’t care. He watches as the prisoner they’d come for, the rebel pilot, is brought forward and made to kneel before the commander. The rebel had shot JS-2156, which had been the closest thing he'd had to a friend. He should feel angry, he should want revenge. He should be mad. He should want to crush the man's skull in. But all he can think about, with JS-2156's blood on his hands, blaster heavy in his palms and the weight of his armor on his shoulders feeling more and more like a boulder he's carrying is "he was doing what he had to in order to survive.”

All he can think about is how the rebel wouldn't have _had_ to shoot JS-2156 if they hadn't shot first. If they hadn't ambushed him. If they hadn't tried to annihilate an entire city. JS-2156 wasn’t killed by a rebel pilot who was ambushed and trying to survive, he’d been killed by the First Order the minute they stole him from his family.

And when the rebel begins to snark back at the commanding officer, smiles through being hit, he begins to think maybe, just maybe, the rebels aren't monsters. In fact, he thinks the rebel is beautiful, and real, and human and monsters, sure monsters can be human but all the human monsters he’s met in his life have never had the purples blues and reds blossom on their face before, and this rebel kneels there as these colors bloom on his face and he’s staring down one of the biggest monster JS-2128 has ever known.

He hadn’t fired his blaster that mission. He had taken his helmet off. They don’t decommission him.

They do, however, schedule him for reconditioning again. He wishes they’d just decommission him instead. He knows when he comes back in the haze, he won’t have JS-2156 to remind him to make it to the smoke. He might not even remember JS-2156.

He is put in a holding cell, next door to an interrogation room. He hears screams, familiar screams. Someone is trying to win the tug of war game with their memories. When it fades out to whimpers and finally is silenced, he knows whoever it was lost the game in their own head, and he just hopes whoever it was isn’t conscious enough to feel the coldness that always blankets someone after that.

\--

He hears his reconditioning will happen in two days time. He honestly doesn’t care. Sometimes, they bring him food. Mostly, they don’t give a damn and hope he starves to death. He sometimes hopes he does too, but he wakes up cold and staring at grey walls of a different kind every morning, he feels disappointed.

He hears that no one remembers JS-2156.

He hears that they’ve already brought in a new batch of “recruits.” They’re small, scared, and forced to forget who they were before given a new designation. It starts with KS-0001 and apparently, with this batch, ends with KS-1000. He hopes they all keep their heads up, shoot true, and make it to the smoke. Or at least that their end is painless.

He hears that his bunk, and JS-2156’s bunk have already been refilled. He doesn’t care.

He also hears that the rebel is set to be executed, the information they needed taken from him through use of the Force (and JS-2128 knows, he _knows_ what torture feels like, he knows what it feels like to have someone go into your mind, rip things from you that you'll never have back). He feels pity for the rebel.

When the day of his third reconditioning comes, he forces himself to remember. He forces himself to remember everything they want him to forget. He refuses to give them that satisfaction.

He’s tossed back into the bunking area, fighting through the haze, but he remembers. He remembers JS-2156, he remembers the smoke illusion of the galaxy outside this base, he remembers the rebel pilot, he remembers the stated execution date, and he remembers that he is going to get them out of here.

He's doing this to be able to redeem himself. He’s going to make everything better.

\--

His plan is pretty dumb.

Actually, it's really fucking dumb, but he's going to be tossed into the fire again anyways, so if dying while trying to save someone else, someone he feels doesn't deserve this, then so be it. It would be the most honorable way to die.

The notion that dying in battle was the most honorable way to die had been drilled into his head since he was a child, that dying on the battle field was the only way a stormtrooper should aspire to die. He always thought that was bullshit, he saw no honor in the war they were fighting. He saw no honor in a death that way. There was nothing honorable or enviable of leaving JS-2156 in the sands of some planet he had never known, no honor is dying nameless and faceless to an enemy he wasn’t even sure was an enemy to begin with.

But helping someone who needed it, that was an honorable way to die. Or, at least the way he'd feel better about it. He thinks that's about the same thing.

He approached the prisoner bay and steels himself. He can do this.

"The general wishes to see the prisoner. I am here to escort him," he says, standing straight, the perfect stormtrooper stance.

The other trooper steps aside, shoves the prisoner forward. “He’s a mouthy one, hope you prepared yourself for that,” is all he says, before going back toward the other cells.

"A whole escort service just for me? Wow, I feel so special. Must suck for you though, prisoner detail. But hey don’t you worry friend, I’ll keep a nice running commentary of the scenery, since I feel like those helmets don’t let you see much, the way you guys shoot sometimes. Not much scenery here though, some nice minimalist architecture though. Oh hey-"

The rebel becomes quiet when JS-2128 shoves him into a hallway, and removes his helmet. He can see the shock written on his face, the red of his helmet no longer hides the color of the man’s face, the purples and blues littered across it, the copper browns of dried blood. He also sees the soft brown of hair and eyes and he wonders if he’s ever going to see something as beautiful as this out in the galaxy.

"I'm here to rescue you. Release you."

It's the same thing, really, he reasons. Both imply freedom.

The rebel smiles, a true smile through all the bruising.

"Now why would you go and do that?"

"Because it's the right thing to do. You don't- you don't deserve to be decommissioned," and there's so much more he wants to say, about how he doesn't believe the First Order is doing the greater good. How he's tired of killing, how he's tired of being _used_ and tired of losing people and being used as replaceable material, but they don't have time for that. It’ll have to be a conversation for another day.

The rebel smiles even brighter, and pokes the heavy plating of his armor with a finger.

"You wanna defect. You need a pilot, you need help."

"...Yeah, I kinda do.”

“Okay, I’ll help you. Since you’re helping me, I guess. Any idea how we’re getting out of here? I’m a little tied up currently,” he says, shaking his shackled wrists at him.

  
JS-2128 smiles sheepishly. “I’m sorry, those will have to stay on until I can get you closer to a plane. Or on one. We need to make it seem passable that I’m actually escorting you somewhere. But, can you fly a TIE fighter?” he asks, and watches as the rebel smiles even wider.

“I can fly anything. And I’ve always wanted to fly a TIE fighter,” he says, and JS-2128 isn’t entirely sure if he’s correct, but he detects a bit of glee in the man’s voice. It’s infectious. He places his helmet back on and grabs the man by the shoulder and walks him forward, the gesture reminding him slightly of JS-2156, and he thinks to himself, _I’m doing it. I’m going toward the smoke._

They walk through the hangar, JS-2128 acting the perfect stormtrooper that he is not. Head up, look straight ahead, left-right marching, blaster aimed at the prisoner. Do not stop. Never stop.

He shoves him into an unattended TIE fighter, undoes the handcuffs, and takes his helmet off again. It’s the best feeling, thinking of never having to put it back on. The rebel rushes toward the controls and immediately looks them over and giggles.

“Oh man, this is the best day ever,” he says, sitting at the helm and beginning the take off sequence. They’ll be spotted soon. “I need you to be my gunner, okay? They’ll realize what we’re doing because this aircraft doesn’t have flight clearance, and I don’t have a code for them. So they’ll start shooting, can you shoot back?”

JS-2128 knows he’s being asked ‘can you shoot your brothers in arms?’ but really, they were never his brothers in arms. They were all cannon fodder. This is what they were all designed to do, anyways.

He nods an affirmative. “Yeah. Head up, shoot true,” he says, and the rebel smiles at him again and watches him take a seat in the gunner’s chair.

They steal a TIE fighter. The alarm went off the minute the rebel had told them his clearance code was “go fuck yourself”, and JS-2128 found himself shooting at masses of white uniforms before the rebel had told him to keep an eye on the weak spots of the TIE, because there were more coming for them. He just laughs and says, “Sir-uh, rebel? The entire TIE fighter is a weak spot. We have no shields.”

He shoots down a TIE fighter, and another and another. He doesn’t realize he’s laughing until a bit later and this is different. He’s never felt this before on any of the forced missions, this sense of relief when he sees the fireballs, when his shots hit true. “Haven’t you ever seen how they seem to disintegrate on impact?” he says, still laughing because he’s free, he’s fighting for his freedom.

“Oh shit, never thought of that!” he hears from the helm, followed by more hollering and laughing.

The rebel, gods the rebel is so amazing in the air. He's willing to believe that he's actually a bird. An angel.

(He's heard about angels, before the Order took him. They were supposed to be beautiful, with wings to make them soar through the sky, and the way that the rebel looks and laughs as they fight and fly through the air makes him think, yes, he must be one). He’s never seen anyone soar through the skies like the rebel is. It’s like he’s one in the same with the plane.

He doesn't even think twice about shooting down other TIE fighters after them. _Head up, shoot true,_ hears.

"OH MAN. Sick shooting! Hey man, what's your name?"

"Designation JS-2128," he says, beaming still, while trying to shoot down more fighters. This is different. This shooting feels right. This feels like a good fight. He's never felt this before.

"JS-2128? That's...that's not a name buddy."

"Only one I got," he says, shooting down another fighter. “That’s what I’ve always been called,” or rather, he thinks, the only thing he’s used to being called. If he had any other designation before that, he doesn’t remember it.

"JS... how about Josh? Can I call you Josh?"

Josh, he thinks and smiles brightly. He likes how it sounds, it’s softer than JS-2128.

"Josh. Yeah, YEAH! I love that!" he says. And he does. It's _his_ own name. No one in the Order barracks had their own name. They were supposed to be one entity. This is his first thing that’s his alone.

"Alright Josh. I'm Tyler Joseph. I'm gonna try to land us okay? We'll work from there," he hears the rebel- no, _Tyler_ \- say and he believes him. He keeps looking through the sights. They’re still being trailed, he can feel it. The First Order doesn’t just stop searching. But he’ll shoot down anyone else who comes for them.

\--

When they land, the first order of business is to get as far away from the land site as they can. The second order of business is to get Josh out of his old uniform.

Josh has never been happier to peel off the outer shell, the hard white uniform hitting the sand. He has the under gear, pants and the shirt, short sleeve, and he knows he's going to get burned by the sun on the desert planet they've landed on.

He doesn't care- he's _free_.

He feels something land on him. A jacket. The one Tyler had been wearing.

"You'll need it. I have long sleeves on. Don't want you toasting up in the sun. Come on, we gotta find my droid," he says, walking forward, hand on the handle of the blaster attached to his hip.

Josh realizes Tyler hadn't bothered to strip him of his own blaster. Does Tyler trust him? He hopes so, he hopes he does. Josh trusts Tyler a lot, but half way through their trek in the desert in search of this droid with some maps, he realizes that he's no longer useful to Tyler. His purpose has been served. If Tyler wanted, he could decommission him right now. At any moment, Tyler could turn around and put a blaster hole in Josh's head and he'd be dead. Another trooper lost in the sand.

Josh also realizes he wouldn't try to fight him off. He's gotten his first taste of freedom, and he's so thankful for that. He's thankful to be burning under the sun, wiping sand out of his eyes and hair and sloughing through the sand of this planet a free man. A free man with a name. His own name.

“Why exactly do we need to find your droid and the maps? If-if you don’t mind me asking, sir,” he says. He doesn’t know where he and Tyler stand. Tyler probably outranks him anyways, and JS-2- no, _Josh_ \- should show him that respect. Maybe he can stay alive a little longer. Tyler stops walking and looks over at him, confused.

“You can ask, you know. And, you don’t have to follow. You’re free now, Josh. A free man. You can go wherever you please, I won’t keep you here. I even have emergency credits in my boot you can take with you, buy yourself passage somewhere in the outer rim, escape fully,” he say and smiles “And just call me Tyler. We’re friends. Friends don’t use rank with each other”.

Josh smiles back. “Then I want to help you find your droid. It sounds important and…it could help?” Tyler nods back at him. “Yeah, this droid, the maps it has, could help bring down the First Order. We worked really hard to find the intelligence, and I need to find it before someone else does,” he says. Josh bites his lip. Is this still his fight?

He thinks about the KS-0001 through KS-1000 recruits. He thinks about the girl from his platoon who he saw murdered when he was 13 cycles old. He thinks about JS-2156 and how he’d said one day he might able to do something about it and yes, this is still his fight.

“Then I’ll help you find it. You can’t…they know where it’s supposed to go but we’re ahead now from them, because they’ll be scrambling to find you. They’re not very good with prioritizing, really,” he says, and he knows he’s rambling, following Tyler up another sandy ridge and toward what he says is a village where they can find the droid hiding.

Tyler is quiet for most of their walk, and Josh doesn’t mind it. He sticks close to him, though, because he likes the proximity, something that was so long frowned upon, and Tyler doesn’t _seem_ to mind, so he continues to walk until they’re practically shoulder to shoulder. The only indication Tyler shows of noticing is a smile and a quick pat on Josh’s shoulder. It’s the first time the gesture doesn’t make him think of someone from his past, and Josh is very thankful for it.

They stop at a watering hole, where they rest a second, soothing hot skin and their thirst. It’s here that Tyler finally looks over at Josh, and Josh feels him staring him from head to toe, assessing him, before asking, “Why did you defect?”

He’d been waiting for this question for what seems like hours, really. He’s surprised Tyler had waited this long to ask. He sighs.

“It’s a long story. Way too long for this trip, anyway. But, what we were doing was wrong. What I was being told to do-forced, to do, was wrong and I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t do it, anymore. I heard you were going to be killed, after they’d tortured you and the way you’d acted, you’d been so much more human than any of the people I’ve ever had to deal with in the First Order. They’d always told us that the Rebels were a bunch of monsters, but, when you were kneeling there, spitting vitriol back at the commander, I really didn’t think you were a monster. You seemed so human,” he can feel Tyler staring at him, and he fiddles with a strap on his boot. “I left because it was all wrong. I saw…I did a lot of terrible, terrible things, and I thought maybe this was my chance to start making things right and escape that life. That’s why I left,” he says.

He hopes Tyler understands. He hopes, as they begin walking again, that Tyler’s silence means he’s reading between the lines and can hear about the murder and the screaming and the pain, pain, _pain_ he’s had to deal with and deal out, and understands why he had to leave.

“I think you left because you had a heart, and the First Order doesn’t. They wanted to rip it away from you,” he finally says, looking at Josh. It feels like hours since they’d last spoken. Josh just nods. Tyler seems to get it after all.

Night fall starts approaching, and Josh begins to wonder if they’ll ever come to close to finding the droid Tyler is looking for. Even if they never did and they kept walking and walking, Josh knows he’d follow Tyler anyways. He’s never trusted someone this much with his life, except of course JS-2156, and maybe he can’t share this freedom with him but he is a free man, and he has accepted that following Tyler is as good a mission as any to have in life.

Tyler pulls his blaster from the holster when they reach a particular cave, and Josh brings his standard issued one up. They clear the cave together, the first time Josh has ever felt that someone truly had his back and cared for his safety, and Tyler does a low beep whistle. A droid comes screeching and barreling toward him and knocks hard into his knees, and even though Josh heard the ‘oomph’ when Tyler hits the floor of the cave, he’s laughing and going “Missed you too, M4-RK. Come on, we gotta get into town and try and get ourselves a ride outta here. And we don’t have much to barter with,” he says. Josh almost wishes he could speak droid, because it seems to eye him up and down before sending an inquisitive beep toward Tyler as they walk.

“This? Oh this is my new friend, Josh. Josh defected from the Order. He saved my life. I was able to save you because of him,” he says, and M4-RK makes an appreciate noise toward Josh before he sends a series of beeps.

“I’m uh, sorry, I don’t understand droid… yet though! I’ll have time to learn?” he says, a question more than anything. He doesn’t really know what he’ll be able to do after this next step.

Tyler laughs, “He says thank you, for saving me. And also said that in his programming, you’re now listed as Josh-fren, instead of ‘First Order asshole’. It’s a high compliment, really,” he says. Josh beams for the rest of the way. He’s never had two friends before.

Within the city, they find someone who sells them a beaten up but functional ship for the half the emergency credits Tyler had and the information Josh had given them about how to find and correctly salvage the TIE fighter they’d left behind. He helps load up M4-RK into the ship, helps Tyler make sure it’ll fly them to their base, and between the walk from the cave to this point, Tyler has already correctly assumed that Josh will leave with them.

It isn’t until they’re in flight that Josh goes “What will happen to me?”

It’s been eating at him since they’d landed on the planet in search of M4-RK (who had already taken a liking to Josh). Tyler seems confused by the question. “What do you mean?”

“When we reach your base, am I to be a prisoner?”

Tyler looks at him, appalled, and sets the controls to autopilot and sits next to Josh in the limited space they have.

“Buddy, no. Fuck no. I wouldn’t let them do that to you. You _saved_ my life. You helped me find M4-RK and the maps he has in his memory bank. We don’t do that in the Resistance, and even if anyone tried, I’d fight them off and we’d fly far away from them, okay?” He seems so sincere when he says it that Josh just nods at him. He hopes he can be helpful to the Resistance, help end the war, help end the pain for everyone. But he hopes, mostly, that he’s able to help Tyler somehow. Tyler has become his new, his only friend, aside from M4-RK, and he doesn’t count until Josh can learn to communicate with him.

“Credit for your thoughts?” Tyler asks, looking at him. He struggles a second, figuring out how to word what he wants to say.

“I just want to be helpful, to you, your people. But, I mostly want to help you? You’re the only close thing I have to a friend, and even then, I think it’s a friendship solely out of duty.”

“Out of duty?”

“I saved your life, you feel like you owe me. But, we’re pretty even there, really. You helped fly me out; you’re helping me even farther away than you had to, away from them. We’re far more than even now.”

Tyler tsks at him. “Well, we should do proper introductions then, so that we’re actually friends.” He holds out his hand to Josh, who tentatively takes it and watches as Tyler shakes it enthusiastically, noticing how bruised his knuckles are, the thin black bands that wrap around his wrist (ink, he realizes. First Order personnel were never allowed to have anything like that).

“Tyler Robert Joseph, Commander of Black Squadron in the Rebellion. Pleasure to meet you,” he says, beaming at Josh, who can’t help but smile back.

“JS- I mean, Josh. I’m Josh, former storm trooper and corporal of JS platoon. Pleasure to meet you,” he says.

“There! See, now we know each other and isn’t that the first step toward becoming close friends?” Josh can’t help but smile.

“Yeah, usually people save grand theft and terrorist level activities for when they’re really good friends.” Tyler bursts out laughing, a full laugh, and Josh thinks it might be the best thing he’s heard all day. This much emotion would have gotten him killed before, but he lets himself feel, because Tyler is showing it and its so nice, not having to be constricted to seeing through red lenses and not having to hear monotone voices repeat the same thing, not having to hurt and maim or be hurt, to be able to feel and show what he’s feeling is so new to him, but if this is what the smoke is like, he’s so glad he went for it.

He asks Tyler about mundane things, which turn slowly more into about the Resistance the closer he can tell they’re getting to Tyler’s main base. “I heard, they were rumors, of course, but,” Tyler eggs him on, looking concerned. “Your general, will she…you said they won’t make me a prisoner, but will she approve of me even stepping foot on your base?”

“She will. Firstly, I’m her favorite pilot. Hey, no, don’t laugh! I’m her favorite flyboy. And secondly, she’s not like those other generals you’ve had to deal with. She’s not. She’s different. We are different than what they painted us to be, Josh.” He just nods at Tyler. He hopes that everyone is half as nice as Tyler, really.

M4-RK makes a series of beeps before standing next to where Josh is sitting. He really likes this little astromech droid. If he has the time, the ability to, he’s going to learn droid to communicate with him. Then he’d definitely have two friends, since he’d be able to properly introduce himself to M4-RK.

He watches as Tyler sits up. “Sorry buddy, we’re getting close to our destination. I gotta get back on the controls, let them know we’re coming in, hang tight? And don’t worry,” he says, walking back to the helm. He thinks maybe he should be worrying, but he finds himself being more calmed by the fact that he’s going to be landing soon, going to hopefully help stop the First Order with the limited knowledge he has of them. And even though he doubts what Tyler says, that they won’t make him a prisoner, that they won’t kill him after the knowledge is extracted from him (he hopes they just let him talk, rather than use the forceful methods he’s used to, but he’d be willing to go through the pain to help Tyler) that they consider letting him stay.


End file.
